Yes, the government doesn’t own anyone’s body. The legitimacy of government authority over someone’s body has never been justified. It’s as simple as that. — NOS4A2

LOL! Tell that to the guy's who got drafted shot and killed in Vietnam. Somewhere on this board there was an explanation of land ownership and the sovereign. It's kind of like that. Kind of like Socrates and that state that created him. In the end, might makes right and you don't own your own body if your rights to the sanctity of it are violated without recourse. Hell, that meth head across the street could own your body if he played his cards right. And my right to bodily integrity is threatened by anti-vaxers running around spreading their filthy disease. Happens all the time. Get used to it.

Yes, the government doesn’t own anyone’s body. — NOS4A2

No one has once claimed that. The fact that you have to resort to straw men gives away the bankruptcy of your position.

The legitimacy of government authority over someone’s body has never been justified. It’s as simple as that. — NOS4A2

There are laws made about what we can and cannot do with our bodies all the time. There are thousands of examples.

Your rights stop when you effect others with your body. It's as simple as that. Yes, we do live in a society -- sorry to inform remind of that. We know you're not a fan.

And, again, vaccines have been mandated in schools for decades. According to you, this is illegitimate. Thankfully people like you aren't in charge of public health.

Your rights stop when you effect others with your body. — Xtrix

:up:

"His right to swing his Covid ends where my nose begins." Actually, that's battery. The definition of "assault" would actually have his right to swing his Covid end well before my nose begins. If I am placed in reasonable fear of imminent bodily harm in the face of his apparent ability to carry it out, he has assaulted me. I think, in light of the Delta variant and pass throughs and other new variants and whatnot, it is reasonable for me to fear his filthy breath.

According to irrational "libertarians" like this guy, the government is always the problem. Remember, that's the mantra. Socialism bad, government bad. Free markets = necessary and good, for "freedom," of course. "Free to choose," etc.

It's a completely inconsistent, incoherent view. People are drawn to it because it's simple, gives them a principle in which you judge all matters, slogans to repeat, etc. But it has no application in the real world whatsoever.

Going to school or work sick effects other people. Coughing and touching things other people touch effects other people. This is why we have laws that employees in restraurants must wash their hands after they use the bathroom. This is why we have vaccine mandates in schools, and have for years. This is why we have traffic laws. This is why you can't go into a supermarket and start shooting people. We live in a society.

:up: Yep. And in a true free-market, capitalist system, they would have to pay for their externalized costs. But no. They socialize their costs onto the backs of everyone else.

If you don’t own anyone’s body, what gives you the right to force vaccines upon them, make medical decisions for them, or otherwise attempt to assert your will with theirs? Nothing.

The problem is you don’t know whether I’m affecting people or not. You are just proposing to deny my bodily autonomy based on your fear-ridden and morally bankrupt precognition.

If you don’t own anyone’s body, what gives you the right to force vaccines upon them, make medical decisions for them, or otherwise attempt to assert your will with theirs? Nothing. — NOS4A2

Straw man.

The problem is you don’t know whether I’m affecting people or not. — NOS4A2

If you live in society, you are. We do know. Which is why we mandate vaccines in schools and many workplaces.

Yours is an idiotic and inconsistent view. But I expect nothing else from you.

Straw man.

It’s my argument, not a breakdown of yours. So maybe you can dispute it.

If you live in society, you are. We do know. Which is why we mandate vaccines in schools and many workplaces.

Yours is an idiotic and inconsistent view. But I expect nothing else from you.

You don’t know. You’re ignorant. You’re scared. Fear and ignorance is the premise you use to justify denying bodily autonomy.

It’s my argument, not a breakdown of yours. So maybe you can dispute it. — NOS4A2

It's a straw man. Not an argument.

If you want to make choices that harm no one else, fine. Do what you want. But, again, sorry to remind you, but we live in a society.

You don’t know. You’re ignorant. You’re scared. Fear and ignorance is the premise you use to justify denying bodily autonomy. — NOS4A2

We do know, because we know how viruses spread.

Fear and ignorance is on your side -- fear of, and ignorance of, vaccines. That's all this boils down to: sheer ignorance on your part. Like with almost everything you discuss.

So here we're left, once again, as non-experts, with a basic choice:

(1) Do we go with the overwhelming scientific and medical consensus, and the corresponding recommendations?

Or do we go with:

(2) The minority of experts that say the opposite?

Classic choice, and very revealing.

Those who choose (2), who are not experts, are almost always doing so for religious or political reasons. Climate change, tobacco, evolution, vaccines, etc. (2) in these cases are extremely small, but have a large following -- for understood reasons.

It's a straw man. Not an argument.

If you want to make choices that harm no one else, fine. Do what you want. But, again, sorry to remind you, but we live in a society.

It’s not a straw man. It’s just an argument you cannot address.

“We live in a society”. And? Such a fact is meaningless when it comes to imposing your will on others. That fact of being in a majority does not justify you imposing your will on a minority.

We do know, because we know how viruses spread.

Fear and ignorance is on your side -- fear of, and ignorance of, vaccines. That's all this boils down to: sheer ignorance on your part. Like with almost everything you discuss.

Straw man. I fear vaccine mandates, hence why I am arguing against “vaccine mandates”, which is obvious by what I wrote. Not only fear, not only ignorance, but lies as well.

If you don’t own anyone’s body, what gives you the right to force vaccines upon them, make medical decisions for them, or otherwise attempt to assert your will with theirs? Nothing. — NOS4A2

You're right that we have a right to bodily autonomy; that sets the bar for state interference high, but not infinitely high. The US Supreme Court has already ruled once before that pandemics clear that high bar.

We always have to balance the interests of the individual against the interests of society at large; there is no blanket expectation that one will always trump the other. It depends on the right that will be infringed, to what degree it will be infringed, the seriousness of the state's interest, and the tailoring of state action to further the interest of society as a whole while minimizing the infringement of the rights of individuals. At least in the US, I believe that's how it's supposed to work.

Fixed. There is no reason to confine causality to certain "physical" events and not others. This is the essence of compatibilism. Reason is a type of cause. — Olivier5

For a hard determinist there are no non-physical events, and that's why it is logically incompatible with any notion of self-actuated freedom. The other point here is that reason (apart from deductive logic where conclusions follow inexorably from premises) is not understood to be strictly determined or determining.

:up:

Such a fact is meaningless when it comes to imposing your will on others. — NOS4A2

I’m not arguing imposing— that’s your argument, remember?

That fact of being in a majority does not justify you imposing your will on a minority. — NOS4A2

That’s called democracy. But regardless, I absolutely do have that right when it effects me. Which is why we vaccinate kids for school, which is why we ban smoking indoors.

If you want to live with the delusion that this affects no one else, that’s your business.

I fear vaccine mandates — NOS4A2

Yes, we know. So you’ve been blathering against school vaccine requirements for years, I suppose.

What a pathetic cause.

We always have to balance the interests of the individual against the interests of society at large; there is no blanket expectation that one will always trump the other. It depends on the right that will be infringed, to what degree it will be infringed, the seriousness of the state's interest, and the tailoring of state action to further the interest of society as a whole while minimizing the infringement of the rights of individuals. At least in the US, I believe that's how it's supposed to work. — Srap Tasmaner

No— the government is always bad and individuals are all that exist. So says the Church of Rand and its followers.

Except when it’s something they approve of, of course.

According to an article in The Atlantic, the ACLU has come out in favour of COVID Vaccine Mandates:

The ACLU’s initial reaction to the idea of COVID-vaccine mandates was skepticism. In a piece published in March, the senior policy analyst Jay Stanley warned that “there’s a lot that can go wrong” with vaccine passports, citing the potential for privacy abuses and lack of universal access associated with forcing people to provide digital proof of their immunization. But last week, the organization endorsed vaccine requirements, adopting the argument that mandatory inoculations against COVID-19 “further civil liberties” by protecting the most vulnerable. “We see no civil liberties problem with requiring Covid-19 vaccines in most circumstances,” wrote David Cole, the ACLU’s legal director, and Daniel Mach, the director of its program on freedom of religion and belief.

In a recent interview, Cole told me that the organization had assigned a working group of lawyers to consult with public-health experts over the past several months in order to develop its position. But he suggested that it was not a particularly close call. “Whether it’s bodily integrity, personal autonomy, or religious freedom, they’re all rights that are recognized in the Constitution, but they’re not absolute rights,” Cole said. “You don’t have the right to inflict harm on third parties, and that’s what you’re doing when you refuse to take a safe and effective vaccine to a very infectious virus.”

:clap:

Biden Unveils Vaccine Mandate Plan Covering Two-Thirds of U.S. Workers

According to an article in The Atlantic, the ACLU has come out in favour of COVID Vaccine Mandates: — Wayfarer

President Joe Biden to the unvaccinated: "We've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us."

Jeff Tiedrich: "Joe Biden has had just about enough of your shit."

Pam Kling: "Along with 81 million of us."

Me: "I have to have a passport to travel? Wah, wah, wah, wah! You meanies! Wah, wah, wah!"

That is at least a practical view. But I must reject it. Society is composed of individuals. The interests of the individual is the interest of society at large.

My concern is that no one, including the state, can know what “the interest of society” is. If we are to mean the interest of every individual involved, then there is a vast variety of sometimes common and sometimes competing interests. If we are to mean the common interest of some group, then that is not the interest of society.

That’s what we’re dealing with here: the interest of some group, in this case the interest of the state and those who seek to gain from the exercise of state power. There is no collective “we” making these decisions, willing to sacrifice our own and our neighbor’s autonomy, willing to deny medical privacy, willing to endorse mass discrimination, all to appease our subjective, consequentialist desires.

The ends do not justify the means, in this case.

Society is composed of individuals. — NOS4A2

The body is composed of cells.

First you say:

The interests of the individual is the interest of society at large. — NOS4A2

Then you say:

. . .no one, including the state, can know what “the interest of society” is. — NOS4A2

Which is it? First you say the interest of the individual is the interest of society, then you say no one can know what the interest of society is. Please clarify.

That’s what we’re dealing with here: the interest of some group, in this case the interest of the state and those who seek to gain from the exercise of state power. — NOS4A2

The state is the representative of society at large. There is a collective "we" making these decisions, willing to sacrifice our own and our neighbor's autonomy, willing to deny medical privacy, willing to endorse mass discrimination, all to appease our subjective, consequentialist desires, all seeking to gain from the exercise of state power to protect the interests of the individual. We are trying to protect ourselves from an enemy common to each individual and to society at large.

I think the interest of society is invisible to you, because what you describe is no society at all, but the proverbial war of all against all.

I do not believe there is evidence that human beings, over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, have ever actually been so blinkered in their worldview. First it was kin, then tribe and village, and over time ever larger groups of people competing and cooperating ever more indirectly, but with at least one purpose in common: the continuation of this society we have made. It's not a trick someone played on us; it's what humans have always done.

If you want to oppose something you think of as The State -- go ahead and do that, let's hear the argument, but you'll have to oppose it with something better than an eternal battle royale. If such a condition were real, it would be a complete clusterfuck. But it's not real, never has been. We have never been that stupid.

:100:

Society’s interest is its own continuation…I must have missed the memo because there is no other way beyond sheer projection to verify such an interest. But no, I did not describe the proverbial war against all, or an eternal battle royal, only that some individuals are trying to impose their will on other individuals, which is closer to the spirit of war than any defense of fundamental rights.

For a hard determinist there are no non-physical events — Janus

Err, that's simply not true. Whether the future is fully predetermined has siltch to see with whether there exist "non-physical events" or not.

What you confuse with determinism is naïve materialism or "physicalism". But if everything is physical, then ideas are also physical, and the word "physical" loses its meaning. Or ideas are not physical and thus do not really exist, and so the idea of physicalism does not exist... So physicalism is either meaningless -- if it accepts ideas as physical -- or self-contradictory -- if it assumes ideas are not physical and thus inexistent.

Most people here see getting the shot as doing almost nothing, practically zero-cost. Even small marginal benefit is a good bet for close to zero cost. — Srap Tasmaner

Quite true; I found taking the shots fun, not unlike skydiving. :-)

only that some individuals are trying to impose their will on other individuals, which is closer to the spirit of war than any defense of fundamental rights. — NOS4A2

Are you an anarchist? Any form of government necessarily involves some group of people imposing their will on others (and each other).

I can't speak on anything like "natural rights" (as something of a physicalist, I'm skeptical of such supernatural notions), but this kind of complete self-autonomy you appear to be advocating seems unworkable in practice. A functioning society requires that there are some things we can't do and other things we have to do.

I’m not one for the supernatural either. And nowhere does it state that we have to mandate people to take a vaccine and deny them access to society if they do not. It’s a simple moral decision.

And nowhere does it state that we have to mandate people to take a vaccine and deny them access to society if they do not. — NOS4A2

Because to you that would make our society unjust, and you don't want our society to be unjust. You're one of us; you just express it as if you're not.

And nowhere does it state that we have to mandate people to take a vaccine and deny them access to society if they do not. It’s a simple moral decision. — NOS4A2

Sure, and there are people who argue that the moral thing to do is to take reasonable steps to reduce the risk of spreading a dangerous disease, and that requiring people to be vaccinated against said disease is one such reasonable step. The moral "imperative" to protect the population-at-large is considered to have a greater priority than the moral "right" to choose one's own medical treatment.

It's the same kind of argument that people make in favour of or against abortion; a woman is said to have a right to choose her own medical treatment, and an embryo/foetus/unborn baby is said to have a right to be born, and we must weigh which right has the greater priority.

But my main point is that a self-professed "absolute bodily autonomy" which you seemed to be arguing for seems infeasible in practice. For there to be a functioning society there are things we can't do and things we must do. And for some cases I think that the practical considerations override any moral considerations, e.g. it is immoral to sentence an innocent man to prison, but the reality of human fallibility is that innocent men are sentenced to prison, and that's a necessary evil.